Page 10 of How To Tempt A Bodyguard

Perhaps something good would come out of this disaster after all.

Chapter four

First Night at an Inn

Matthew

The village of Hartwell announced itself with a church spire and the smell of woodsmoke. By the time they reached the inn, a respectable coaching house called The Crossed Keys, the sun had begun its descent.

Matthew climbed down from the wagon, cataloguing the ache in his ribs where he'd caught the edge of a trunk during the crash. Nothing cracked. Just bruised. He'd had worse.

When he turned to help Mrs Archer down, he almost didn't recognise her.

The pearl earrings were gone. Her elaborate coiffure had been dismantled and reworked into a simple knot at her nape, the kind a woman without a lady's maid might manage. A plain shawl covered her head and shoulders, shadowing her face. She'd loosened her fichu to hide the expensive lace at her collar. There was dust—deliberately applied, he suspected—ground into the hem of her travelling dress.

She looked like a prosperous merchant's wife. Comfortable but not remarkable.

Not worth remembering.

Matthew filed that away. A spoiled aristocrat wouldn't know how to make herself invisible. Wouldn't think to try.

The hired carriage bearing the injured driver and footmen had departed an hour ago, bound for London with enough coin to ensure their care. Mrs Archer had handled that too: quick instructions, generous payment, a pointed reminder that they'd seen nothing worth mentioning. The men had nodded and gone without argument.

She'd orchestrated the whole thing in under ten minutes. Then she'd climbed into the wagon, arranged her skirts, and resumed looking helpless.

The innkeeper emerged, wiping his hands on his apron. His eyes performed the rapid calculation of a man assessing his guests' worth: Mrs Archer's dusty dress, the trunks being unloaded, and then Matthew himself, with his labourer's clothes and scarred knuckles.

Matthew watched him relax. Nothing remarkable here. Just ordinary travellers.

Good.

"Wait here," Matthew said quietly. "I'll arrange the room."

Mrs Archer nodded, keeping her head bowed, her shawl pulled forward to shadow her features. She drifted towards the wagon, positioning herself near the trunks as the stable boys began unloading them.

Matthew approached the innkeeper. "Need a room for the night. My wife and I had trouble on the road, carriage accident. We're worn through."

"Sorry to hear it, sir." The innkeeper's tone was sympathetic but brisk. "I've a good room available, just up the stairs. Private, quiet. And the trunks?"

"Brought up carefully. They're fragile."

"Of course, sir. At once."

Matthew gave the name, Edward White, wool merchant, Leeds, and handled the coin. The innkeeper didn't blink. A man paying in advance, not haggling over the rate. Respectable. Unremarkable.

When he turned back, Mrs Archer was supervising the unloading with quiet intensity. She wasn't touching the trunks, that would be beneath even a merchant's wife, but she watched each one come off the wagon with sharp, tracking eyes

One of the stable boys stumbled, and her whole body tensed. When the trunk landed safely, she exhaled. A controlled release that most people wouldn't notice.

Matthew noticed.

He made his way back to her, pitching his voice low. "Problem?"

"No." She didn't look at him, her gaze still fixed on the trunks. "I simply want to ensure nothing is damaged or misplaced."

The stable boys began carrying the trunks inside. Mrs Archer followed, her pace unhurried but her attention unwavering. She paused at the inn's entrance, watching each trunk disappear through the door, her fingers counting against her skirt in a rhythm only she could hear.

Three of the trunks, Matthew realised, received more scrutiny than the others. She tracked those with heightened focus.